Floods, flames and grass skirts

Kelly and I seem to attract disaster. Two days after flying out of Boston where, in the past two weeks, we have witnessed an oil spill and a giant church fire, we wake up to find that Melbourne is flooded. Do Kelly and I attract disaster? And news flash! Lowest recorded temperatures in Melbourne history for february. The day before we arrived it was in the 90sF and today it's in the 40s. Hmmm

We are in Brighton and we have to go to the north part of the city to meet with Professor Martha Macintyre. But the trains are not running due to flooding, fallen trees and such. Mad rush to a cab which takes us to a different train station which takes us to another train where we wait for a very late train to take us to another station where we meet Martha. She's the real deal, a melanesian fieldworker with decades of experience.

She takes us into the storehouse, a giant warehouse full of the museum's many collections. The curator, Ron Vanderwal, brings us into a large room lined with shelves of artifacts. Remarkable: There are no Bagi (Kula trade ornaments) in M's collection even though he is most famous for his writing on Kula. There are restricted human remains (skulls?), human hair(used as part of mourning rituals) and a great grass skirt. Kelly is looking forward to arriving in the Trobriands so she can sport one. We'll send pics.

Our itinerary for the next 3 months is:

now-Feb. 13th- Australia(mostly Melbourne)

February 14th- Port Moresby (PNG)

February 20th- Trobriand Islands

March 17th- Singapore

March 21st- London

April 12th- Krakow . . . after that it gets a little muddy. We'll keep you posted . . .